CONFIGURATIONAL FACTORS IN THE PERCEPTION OF UNFAMILIAR FACES

Young et al (1987) have demonstrated that the juxtaposition of top and bottom halves of different faces produces a powerful impression of a novel face. It is difficult to isolate perceptually either half of the 'new' face. Inversion of the stimulus, however, makes this task easie r. Upright chimeric faces appear to evoke strong and automatic configu rational processing mechanisms which interfere with selective piecemea l processing. In this paper three experiments are described in which a matching paradigm was used to show that Young et al's findings apply to unfamiliar as well as to familiar faces. The results highlight the way in which minor procedural differences may alter the way in which s ubjects perform face-recognition tasks.